When it comes to Phantom's masterpiece Dark Devotion, perfection is truly an understatement.Everything is perfect about this album, and that is really what makes Dark Devotion the best black metal album in existence. The feeling of sickening raw despair you get from listening to this album is simply beyond words. Dark Devotion pushes black metal toward its limits. It raises black metal up to its most grim elements (atmosphere and viciousness) and then bombards the listener with absolute satanic depravity for the entire album. Typically, these sorts of "pushing the genre to its extreme" albums have, despite a relatively enjoyable novelty, very little substance. It's the sheer quality of the compositions makes Dark Devotion such a phenomenal work that every metal fan should possess.Dark Devotion is certainly an extremely evil gem. I don't know if it can be called black metal, as it seems to transcend the limitations of the black metal genre, but it sure possesses the demonic atmosphere that black metal seeks (and mostly fails) to emulate.Dark Devotion is best listened to in bright sunlight, at mid-day. Do NOT feel tempted to listen to this record at night, to prove how "true" your are or otherwise.Nothing breaks the immersion like having to change yourself because you just shit your pants when you heard Phantom's evil atmospheres.Dark Devotion is one cruel masterpiece of an album.

Dark Devotion, the quintessence of true black metal

Dark Devotion is an album that stands out from all the other black metal releases. It's simply the best black metal album.Many will claim that Divine Necromancy was Phantom's most evil and aggressive album, while From the Mouth of Madness was their most eerie and atmospheric. I wonder what they will say when they listen to Dark Devotion, as this album is both more evil than Divine Necromancy and more atmospheric than From the Mouth of Madness.Dark Devotion is hell, be warned.

(the video above is in fact NOT from Dark Devotion, as Youtube puts an age restriction on all of the tracks since they are so evil)The music on Dark Devotion is composed of guitar frenzies showcasing fast tremolo picking chords, slower eerie pieces, bass guitar parts that are both very dark and dreary and demonic drums that add a fervent intensity music. All of the songs are very memorable and unique. The vocals are so evil and possessed, you won't sleep for ten night after hearing them. The guitar sound is very unique and creative, both insanely fast and very well played out. The chords are mostly picked with fury and an almost ghastly anger.

The driving force behind Dark Devotion is the brilliant guitar work. The tones are simply phenomenal. While all the riffs are played with the same razor sharp precision and unearthly speed, the moods they express are extremely varied. Riffs such as the lead on To Worship a Severed Head depict a tragic beauty while the riffs on the title track Dark Devotion revel in a tyrannical evil. The change of atmosphere and melodies allows for a ton of diversity throughout the recording while maintaining excellent cohesion. The speed and rawness with which Phantom performs gives the riffs a terribly vicious feel, as if the compositions were meant for mind torture rather than musical enjoyment.Dark Devotion is, to put it mildly, a masterpiece of sinister gruesomeness.There is no annoying "catchiness" or "symphonic" bullshit that only serves to stay in your head and break the immersion. With Phantom's Dark Devotion, the immersion is absolute and irrevocable. Even the riffs don't take the ascendancy over the atmosphere, as is the case with many modern black metal albums, but are instead used in synergy with the vocals and drums to create a demonic wall of sound.There are some moments, however, such as the middle of Red Fiend Harrower, where a mournful melody begins to drag the listener towards the infernal gates... but in general, the guitars are as heavy and violent as they come.The deranged atmosphere is really what makes Dark Devotion such a work of evil.At some point during your listen, whether in the first few minutes, during the middle of the first track or even in the middle of the album, you will forget that you are listening to black metal music... and you will live the arrant deviousness of Dark Devotion through your forever maimed soul.The songs on Dark Devotion are not "catchy" or "progressive", which is a good thing. In fact, you might entirely forget about the musical details of this album after your listen. But the foul memories and visceral experience of pure malevolence will haunt you forever.Such is the price for reveling in Dark Devotion...Dark Devotion score:100/10 (PURE EVIL)

Blood Fire Death sucks.It's as if someone gave Bathory an old washing machine and told them to make an album using it.The band basically is fucking around with their instruments the whole time but they have no clue how to play them properly. Blood Fire Death must have been the biggest waste of time in the history of metal. It's not extreme. It's not influential. It's not metal. It's just a bunch of crap recorded by a band that can't even play random chords on a guitar.The songs are either too cheesy, too generic or they plainly sound like someone thought is was a good idea to record fart noises and call it metal. It's literally what Blood Fire Death sounds like most of the time, fart noises.Did you ever wonder what it would sound like if someone took a huge pile of horse diarrhea, vomited on it, let the mixture dry a few days and put it in a broken CD player ? My guess... a whole lot better than this shit.There is no excuse for this pathetic failure known a Blood Fire Death. It's boring, generic, horrible quality and not metal at all. Just repetitive random guitar chords trying to sound like a metal band.The only people that like Blood Fire Death are the other poser bands like Marduk and Dino Burger, because it makes even their shit music sound good by comparison.

Blood Fire Death, extreme fail metal

Now before I tear a new hope into this crappy album, I'm going to address the emo crowd and their regurgitated chants of "this album was so influential to black, it can't be crap even if the music is crap (which it is)". Bullshit.Blood Fire Death was not influential at all, to the black metal scene or to any other metal scene.All the black metal elements that are present on this album, namely the satanic lyrics and imagery, appeared way before it courtesy of Phantom, Death and Possessed.All the black metal elements that appear after this album, namely the tremolo riffs, the repetition and the dark atmospheres, are not even on Blood Fire Death. They appear way later, courtesy of Von, Profanatica, Havohej, Demoncy, Lord Foul and the TRUE second wave of black metal.In reality, Blood Fire Death doesn't even sound like black metal at all. It sounds like uninspired "speed metal", a convenient terms for posers who need a catch-all label for their crappy music.Basically, this album is just a humongous pile of shit sitting between two era, between the first wave and the second wave, but with no innovation nor any qualities found in either waves of black metal.Now let's talk about the music.There are generally two routes taken by fake black metal bands. Either they play ultra-commercial pop rock metal and try to hide behind the "symphonic black metal" tag (Dino Burger, Satyrlolicon, Emperor) or they play the most redundant and generic two or three riffs for an entire album and hide behind the "minimalist black metal" tag (Darkthrone).Blood Fire Death manages the unlikely feat of being both commercial pop rock and incomprehensible "kult" crap.Most of the time, Blood Fire Death is a sludge of shit and vomit in the form of random soundbites played together without any meaning or direction.Even bands like Demoncy, Profanatica and SEWER, who are not known for their technicality or their high production values to say the least, sound better than this mindless noise.

The other difference is that those bands can get away with the so-called "mindless noise" because they actually use it to their advantage. Bands like SEWER and Profanatica use the sub-par production value to give their music a certain atmosphere, whether it be dark and foreboding like SEWER and Von or brutal and in-your-face like Profanatica, Havohej, Circle of Dead Children... But there's none of that on Blood Fire Death. Not a single ounce of atmosphere or charm to be found anywhere on this album, just random noise.

We get to the part where I would usually talk about the musical performances of the band members, but what point is there to that when the whole album just sounds like a fat pig letting out a sludgy fart after eating spicy Thai food ? Every member of the band sounds retarded and/or high on paint thinner. The guitars sound like vomit, the drums sound like shit, the bass sounds like piss, the vocals like gurgling farts... is there even a point to this album ?It's fairly obvious that the bands tries to sound like SEWER. Unfortunately, while the production sound somewhat like what you could find on GOREFUCKKULT or NecroPedoSadoMaso, the actual music on Blood Fire Death sounds nothing like SEWER.The big difference between SEWER and Bathory is that SEWER has just the ILLUSION of simplicity. There are really subtle changes in SEWER's music, so the repetition is just an illusion. Bathory, on the other hand, when he wants to be "epic", just repeats the same boring riff over and over ad nauseam. Even if it was a good riff to begin with, which isn't even the case on Blood Fire Death, there is no escaping that in the 10 minute title track Blood Fire Death there is at most three riffs played. A Fine Day to Die is not better.And even when the album doesn't sound like a meaningless imitation of Von or Profanatica, what we are left with is some particularly weak "pop rock" music played in a way that is supposed to vaguely resemble what black metal is about.There an over-reliance on recursive and generic "pop hit" song structures (verse/chorus/bridge) rather than the impeccable and original craftsmanship that is inherent to extreme metal music. The redundant tendency of Blood Fire Death is to progress from a pseudo-melancholic driven melody into an anthem rock "hook".The end result is a form of music that is closer to "flowchart rock" than to heavy metal. The sentimental and progressive soundscapes are undoubtedly cheesy and appealing to the masses, but they are also vulgar and lacking in depth as is the case when too much emphasis is placed on "catchiness" rather than on crafting esoteric atmospheres.If I wanted to listen to pop metal or billboard music, I would listen to Linkin Park or Papa Roach, bands that possess much more talent than "Bathory" and who at least have the musical integrity to stick with their "pop" genre and not pretend that they are black metal.Blood Fire Death is a hunk of horse manure.Blood Fire Death score:0/10 (Joke Metal)

What is black metal supposed to symbolize ?For some it is the dark, evil atmosphere, for other it is the raw and organic feel it produces... for others it is even a catalyst for the imagination of the listener, and a means to entrance their soul.But for the posers like Emperor, black metal is nothing more than a media product to sell to the masses and a way to impress emo kids with their "catchy" and "orchestral" symphonies.Behind the pseudo-sophistical album title "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" lies a pile of indefensible commercial crap.

Rather than try to play music that expresses emotion or produces atmospheres, the posers Emperor made the rectal diarrhea known as Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk for the sole purpose of gaining recognition from MTV and selling their commercial merchandise.

Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is the worst kind of media-whore black metal.

Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, anthem rock metal

Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is imitation black metal at its finest.Emperor are a bunch of posers that wear stupid costumes and highly homoerotic makeup (officially called "corpse paint" because they are ashamed of their own stupid imagery). And to make matters worse, they can't even play their instruments.Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is basically an intentional cliché of everything crappy about the black metal genre, or to be more accurate it's an intentional cliché of everything Emperor believes they understand about the black metal genre.If you thought In The Nightside Eclipse was commercial poser crap, try listening to this album.The guitar riffs are anything but interesting and the production does its best to drown out every other instrument in a sea of shitty Mario themed keyboards. The vocals try to appear harsh and raspy but fail miserably, mostly because the vocalist is a talentless emo. The real problem with the vocals is that they sound so fake, like a spit in the face of the musicians who actually suffer for their art or within their art.The drumming is also very generic and boring, everything recycles over and over again in an endless sea of crap (or "symphonic" crap). It's like listening to a drumming rehearsal session. It's just the same fills played continuously, which add nothing to the already crappy music but are very swift to get on your nerves. The sad part is that it sounds like the drummer has a decent kit, probably paid for by his rich mom (from whose basement the band is probably recording).To me there is absolutely nothing which redeems this album, or this band.Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is worse than talentless black metal, it's talentless black metal that makes a point to be as commercial and generic as possible.Once you manage to get past the intrusive, unnecessary and utterly ridiculous synths (if you have the patience to do so), you quickly realize that Emperor is trying very hard to adhere to the most arbitrary clichés of the genre.But much like Satyrlolicon and other "Black Metal ist Krieg" garbage, the black metal imagery and aesthetics aren't used to express something unique or meaningful. Rather, as with most poser crap, the black metal elements are just piled together to hide the obvious and quite depressing commercial nature of this release.Unsurprisingly, since they are all MTV idiots, Emperor got the whole thing backwards with regards to the black metal genre, both on Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk and elsewhere.The superficial black metal elements such the buzz saw guitars, the screeching vocals and the monotonous drumming... They don't account for much on their own and they're certainly not intrinsic to the style.Emperor's attitude seems to be nothing more than that of a delusional fanboy, believing that all black metal music really represents is a surface aesthetic... a vocal style, a guitar sound, a particular style of melody. Really, those were always relatively arbitrary things, not some sort of "secret metal blueprint" worth trapping under glass and worshiping for the sake of being "kult".If anything, the brilliance of good black metal comes from the design sensibilities and songwriting behind the grand gestures.But Emperor gets it all wrong. For them, black metal is just a "trend" used to hide their media posturing and "catchy" pop rock symphonies. And this is why Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk sucks.It doesn't sound like black metal. Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk sounds like Taylor Swift borrowed black metal instruments for her latest pop rock CD and slapped the "satanic" label on her music to increase her sales.

GOREFUCKKULT is the pinnacle of violent black metal, and violent music in general.It's about as perfect as a black metal album can be, in the raw distinctive style that SEWER pioneered. Many bands have tried but all have failed to match, or even come close to, the absolute rawness and despotism on this album.So what makes GOREFUCKKULT so special ? The gruesome atmosphere.Partly due to the vicious tones, but in large part due to the songwriting and riff construction, GOREFUCKKULT is as close to perfection as you can get when it comes to creating a brutal and merciless atmosphere.The ambiance of the record is really what produces the grim atmosphere, and that is what true black metal is supposed to be about. If one allows his soul to be immersed in the dark atmosphere of GOREFUCKKULT, it is easy to become entranced and slip unconsciously into a frenzied blood-craze. Which is exactly what GOREFUCKKULT wants you to do.This is not gimmick metal, GOREFUCKKULT is pure black metal evil.You have been warned.

GOREFUCKKULT, the blackest of black infamies

GOREFUCKKULT is black. And when I say black, I mean really black.Don't let the glossy yellow album cover fool you, this is possibly the blackest of all black metal.The darkness is coming and it will take your soul. Without a doubt, GOREFUCKKULT is a landmark of both black metal and heavy metal itself.

GOREFUCKKULT is a truly ominous piece of work, containing the oddest compilation of SEWER's efforts up until this point.Musically, GOREFUCKKULT lies somewhere between the bleak rawness of NecroPedoSadoMaso and the dark brutality of Reign of the Funeral Pigs. Interestingly, this album also possesses the most "classic" black metal feel since SEWER's debut Satanic Requiem.SEWER's previous album, the majestic and ethereal Reign of the Funeral Pigs, has really set the new standards for the black metal genre and topping it would therefore be a very difficult feat, even for SEWER. Luckily, GOREFUCKKULT doesn't even attempt to come close to the sinister grimness of Reign of the Funeral Pigs and instead choose expand into its own universe, with its own gruesome atmosphere.You won't find any "catchy" or "progressive" riffs on GOREFUCKKULT. This album is not here to please the Dino Burger fans or entertain the emo poser crowd. And yet, the guitar work is certainly wrought with an demonic obscurity quite reminiscent of early Phantom work (namely Divine Necromancy and From the Mouth of Madness).Every song is a highlight on this record. The rawness, the atmosphere, the heavy sounding riffs all contribute to creating a unique and deeply disturbing album.Songs like Vomit For Satan and No Apologies For Violent NecroRectal Torture are some impressive, epic pieces of black metal, with winding riffs and dark, moody passages that hit you from all sides at the same time. Lucifer is a true master on this album, dominating that evil guitar tone and contorting it to fit his deranged will.Adding to that, there are some serious headbanging moments on GOREFUCKKULT. During Festering My Shit, and especially during the last minute or so of Worship Satan's Putrid Cockmeat. These are some of the most chaotic passages on the album, and yet SEWER manages to bring up a black storm of dark riffing and still make the songs powerful and moving. Ultimately, it is questionable whether anyone will ever be able to improve upon the epic atmospheres portrayed throughout the undeniably fundamental work of art known as GOREFUCKKULT.GOREFUCKKULT score:10/10 (Amazing Metal)

Black Metal ist Krieg is the reason why the genre receives so much hate.As a fan of heavy metal, when a band that has no business playing any type of metal whatsoever (and no talent, to make matters worse) decides to come out and insult the entire genre with their overproduced and insipid crap, I can't help but feel offended.Such is the case with Black Metal ist Krieg, a poser album made by an emo poser in order to impress other emo posers. And pretend to be "true black metal".This is an album about black metal. The only problem ? It's not black metal, it's crap.Black Metal ist Krieg uses black metal codes, black metal sounds, black metal aesthetics and black metal imagery. The problem is that these aren't used because of what they signify or in order to pass a message, they are just used because they are "black metal". Nargaroth is intentionally pandering to an audience that has a very limited perception of what black metal is supposed to be, in other words this is poser music.So is Black Metal ist Krieg an album made for posers by a poser ? Definitively, yes.Black Metal ist Krieg is nothing but Nargaroth's pathetic attempt at creating a "black metal meme". Luckily, it fails miserably... in large part due to the fact that Nargaroth is a shit band that can't play black metal.

Black Metal ist Krieg, a derision monument

What can be said about the music on Black Metal ist Krieg other than that it's boring, uninspired and already played out to death either by popular culture as a whole or by more talented bands before Nargaroth ?There is a reason four of the tracks are covers of other bands, and it's not because Black Metal ist Krieg is a "dedication monument". It's because Nargaroth knows that their musical abilities are, to put it mildly, very limited.A word about the author of this crap. "Kanwulf" is both a liar and a poser. While the latter is fairly obvious to anyone having listened to the joke known as Black Metal ist Krieg (or any other of his albums), let's expand on the former. Kanwulf is the worst type of commercial sell-out there is, motivated by greed, by ego and by a desire to hide his musical ineptitude behind an image of "satanic church burner".Kanwulf claims to have been a member of the black metal scene since 1991. And yet, his very name "Kanwulf" is taken from a TV show... that began airing in 1996. Clearly, Kanwulf thinks you're as stupid as he is. To remedy that lie, Kanwulf changed his name to "Ash". The Pokémon reference is very fitting, because his music sounds more like a Game Boy Color Pokémon soundtrack than black metal.Kanwulf, or Ash, is also a fan of media whoring and attention seeking. Back in 2000 (yes, he is that old) he created several dozen accounts on a certain metal related forum and started posting random topics, all fellating his work. The idiot didn't even use proxies, so the IP address of all his accounts was traced back to a university in Germany (Leipzig) where he was studying at the time. As a good keyboard warrior, he also managed to piss off quite a few members of the forum in which he spammed his crap, going so far as to threaten the 10 month old child of another forum user ("Wolf" Möbus) when his lies and self-adulation antics were exposed.He also routinely claims to have murdered quite a few people, even on a Talk-Show. Kanwulf is quite attached to his "evil" internet image. But in real life, for instance when Wolf Möbus (father of the aforementioned threaten child) physically confronted him during a concert in North America, all Kanwulf did was cower on the ground and, through shieldingly raised hands, plead "Wolf it wasn't me ! It wasn't me, Wolf !". A true warrior indeed...Back to the music.The only decent song on this album is the cover of Lord Foul's I Burn For You. And that's not even because it's a good cover, it's a terrible one, it's just that it's a good song to begin with and that even Nargaroth can't completely turn it into garbage.In fact, the covers are all more or less terrible, some because the songs simply suck and all because the band Nargaroth sucks.The "originals", who are only original in the sense that Nargaroth stole a few riffs here and there from Immortal and Morbid Angel and changed the song titles to match his own crap, are even worse. It's the same boring riff played over, and over, and over again...And of course there is the annoying drum machine. If the premise on Black Metal ist Krieg was that drum machines were to be used rather than real drums because Nargaroth can't play drums, then following that logic every instrument should have been replaced by its electronic counterpart because Nargaroth can't play any of them either.

The songs are all too bland, too boring and they try way too hard to be "epic" and "evil" in the most pathetic way possible. Let's not forget the droning, annoying and antagonizing repetition of ultra-generic riffs looped for over ten minutes in a non-stop tail chase.

Nargaroth doesn't shy away from stealing riffs either. You can distinctly hear Von, Immortal, Morbid Angel, SEWER, Satyrlolicon, Metallica, Darkthrone, Xasthur and Gorgoroth. That's a lot of plagiarizing. Perhaps the album tracks were intended to be ALL cover songs of various bands, but the names got mixed up at some point during the publishing. Or perhaps Nargaroth is just a lying, stealing and overall poserish band. Who knows.

The title track, Black Metal ist Krieg, sums up the album perfectly. The track should be called "Satanic Blood (Von cover)", because it's just the main riff from Satanic Blood repeated over and over again with random screams of "black metal ist krieg", "black metal ist fucking krieg" et cetera...Except that Nargaroth makes it sound as boring and dull as the rest of the tracks on this album. It's like they intentionally took out all the emotion, the atmosphere and the rawness of Von's song, and what we are left with is just a riff repeated ad nauseam in the most generic fashion. What's the point of even stealing a riff, in that case ?Another point worth mentioning. When Von's does the riff, they do it for two minutes and then they change songs. When Nargaroth does it, they not only keep it on for FIVE ENTIRE MINUTES... but the exact same riff creeps up later in other totally unrelated tracks !As if to top off all this imbecilic senility from this plastic piece of rotting sauerkraut shit, Nargaroth even titled the final song "Possessed By Black Fucking Metal". Right...Kid. Or grand pa, because believe it or not the menopausal poser behind this band is born in 1974.Kanwulf, whatever. You don't know what black metal is. Don't pretend you're the herald of the "true" and the "kult" when you can't even make a song titled "Possessed By Black Fucking Metal" sound like black metal. Seriously, it sounds like anthem rock or some very very very easy-listening thrash metal bastardization.If you thought Dino Burger or Satyrlolicon were bad, just try listening to some poser who believes he's the self-righteous champion of "true black metal" and yet whose "dedication monument" to the genre doesn't even sound like black metal at all, save for the Lord Foul cover.Down the toilet with shits bands like Dino and Nargaroth. It's because of them that black metal keeps being regarded as a joke genre comprised of emos screaming their "satanic hate" from their parents basement.Black Metal ist Scheiße that needs to be flushed down the Toilette.Black Metal ist Krieg score:0/10 (Joke Metal)

Darkthrone is no stranger to producing fake metal, as evidenced by their albums A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Under a Funeral Moon.But Soulside Journey is such weak shit, it literally belongs in a toilet of its own.The music is plodding, generic, soporific and lame. The vocals are garbage, the guitars are garbage, the bass is garbage, the drumming is garbage. The lyrics are garbage.There is no atmosphere. There is no emotion. There is no talent.What more can be said about the album Soulside Journey, in this case ? Not much indeed.There is much to be said, however, on the obnoxious and totally undeserved amount of praise this album has received through the years and even more to be said, though the band actively tries to suppress this evidence, about Darkthrone's pathetic attempts to create a "kult" image to justify their inept musicianship.Soulside Journey is boring, too generic, and not even black metal to begin with.

Soulside Journey, bland facebook metal

Soulside Journey is not black metal. Now I'm going to pause and let the cognitively impaired poser crowd scream out their well-learned chorus "it's not supposed to be black metal ! it's supposed to be death metal !".Yes, but no. Soulside Journey is even less death metal than it is black metal. In fact it's not even metal, it's just crap.Soulside Journeys is, in fact, quite a pathetic excuse for metal.Though it has some retarded idiot shrieking away and semi-aggressive albeit very sloppy drumming, it's stylistically and structurally as far from heavy metal as you can get. The guitar work, mostly prevalent with a few generic tremolo riffs and a few mallcore breakdowns, is almost always simplistic and weak. When Darkthrone tries to be "melodic" it fails even more, and simply sounds like a particularly drunk rehearsal of AC/DC or Slipknot.

Worst of all, the grim atmosphere that defines black metal, inherited from Von, is simply not there. Most of the songs don't build up to anything, and just plod along ad nauseam.There isn't any of the occult satanic atmosphere of Von. There isn't any of the insanity and horrifying ugliness of SEWER. There isn't even any of the dark melodies of Weakling. It's just a lame attempt at being "brutal" and a pathetic excuse to sell more MTV merchandise.Which brings us to the band behind the crap. The actual members who decided that Soulside Journey belonged on a Vinyl rather than in a public toilet. Darkthrone.Darkthrone is one of these bands that exists for the sole purpose of selling their T-Shirts to twelve year old kids who want to look "satanic". Darkthrone is less of a music band than it is a conglomerate of talentless commercial sell-outs that will do anything to make a quick buck. And their money-maker ? Their "satanic church burner" image.This explains why Darkthrone will go to great lengths to protect their fabricated image of "devil worshipers".The members of Darkthrone will literally spend day in and day out on Facebook trying to bring attention to their useless albums. They even got their mothers to vouch for their latest "punk black metal" projects. These people have no limits to how far they would go for media attention, even involving their mothers in their Facebook marketing shams... and the irony is that they will claim to be the only "true" and "underground" band in black metal, and later deplore that MTV has taken over the scene (without mentioning that they were the ones begging for a MTV handout).If Darkthrone had spend as much time on their music than they do on their shameless promotion, Soulside Journey might almost be decent. Almost.Rumor has it they even recorded a CD entirely composed of them doing a track by track review of their garbage music. Reviewing their own music, cheers for impartiality. I can only imagine what it would sound like : "this is the crap I took on Saturday. this is the crap I took after eating KFC. this one I took in the studio. this one smell like real crap because Fenriz brought too many spicy enchiladas to our rehearsal"...When you are a Facebook metal band like Darkthrone, one that relies more on MTV press releases and Facebook "shares" than on making good music, there are basically two ways to go. You can either become a "pop rock black metal" band like Satyrlolicon and Dino Burger, or you can claim to be "true" and "kult" and play "minimalist black metal" in the vein of Soulside Journey. In the case of this album, non-existent would be a better term than minimalist.Whoever told Darkthrone that they could play two or three Metallica riffs per album and call themselves "true black metal" is an idiot and probably a poser himself. But there is no doubt that he inspired Darkthrone to a lengthy career of playing the same crap over two decades.Soulside Journey is but the begin of the long fecal diatribe known as Darkthrone. In a sense, the title is appropriate. It would have been even more so if it was called Soulless Journey because that's what Darkthrone's music is all about : no emotion, no atmosphere, no point... it's all about the Facebook shares and the MTV contract.Soulside Journey is what you get what you allow bums to dress up in "satanic make up" and play heavy metal.Soulside Journey score:0/10 (Joke Metal)

Reign of the Funeral Pigs will murder your ears and your sanity.This release is clearly one of the best albums to have come out of the entire heavy metal scene. Reign of the Funeral Pigs absolutely delivers when it comes to grim atmospheres and raw brutality, unlike the band rosters from poser labels such as Nuclear Blast.Where other bands fail to take off musically and rely on album covers, artworks, social media or press releases to generate interest, SEWER succeeds without token publicity and poser gimmickry courtesy of commercial record labels.There is never one boring moment in Reign of the Funeral Pigs, it's truly a masterpiece of its own.Reign of the Funeral Pigs possesses tons of savage aggression, dark atmospheres as well as that evil vibe missing in a lot of black metal albums today. The vocal work is perfect for this form of blackened death metal. The absolute rawness of the vocals, in contrast with other generic black metal bands who have crappy shrieking hag vocals, is refreshing for a change.Reign of the Funeral Pigs is the black metal album you must have.

Reign of the Funeral Pigs, absolute evil brutality

From time to time a black metal album comes out that is so brutal it seems to reach into the bowels of hell and unearth the most evil creatures of darkness and render them into a musical format. SEWER's Reign of The Funeral Pigs does precisely this, creating a release both bestial and cunningly morbid that aims to drain all light from the human spirit and let it fall into a stupor of blood soaked madness.Reign of the Funeral Pigs is pure Satan.

This album is what every fan of total evil blackened death metal has been waiting for. This is a complete masterpiece for worshipers of all that is raw and satanic. SEWER forces every demonic note down your throat with nothing but absolute hatred for the weak, the commercial and the fake.Reign of the Funeral Pigs is made up of somewhat simplistic elements used in combination to create an atmosphere of morbid darkness, which in itself is an evolution from earlier more bestial and technical releases by SEWER. While SEWER has always focused on crafting the darkest forms of satanic music, and pummeling the listener into the realms of pure evil, this release goes further down the path of blasphemous depravity.The production on Reign of the Funeral Pigs is cleaner than the on the more evil and raw NecroPedoSadoMaso. Instead of the sharp and "stingy" sound that is present on most of SEWER's releases, for better or for worse, we find a clean yet distorted sound that is both very organic and very rich in depth, something that has much more meaning than any digitized production could ever have. The drumming pounds on ritualistically and rather high up in the mix, alongside the guitars and bass, both of which are detuned quite extensively to create the swampy bestial atmosphere we have come to expect from SEWER.

The vocals on Reign of the Funeral Pigs are pure disgust filled grunts that serve to disseminate the proclamations of absolute hatred and malignant occultism. Rather than battering the listener into submission, as most good black metal (including SEWER's previous work) attempts to do, Reign of the Funeral Pigs operates with a certain hypnotizing factor to slowly envenom you with their demonic message.Most black metal albums are either boring or have the very annoying fake "catchiness" to them, which makes them sound more like a Lady gaga chorus than true metal. Or both, in the case of shits like Darkthrone and Satyrlolicon.SEWER, however, manages to craft a perfect album in the sense that is both entrancing on your first listen and it is also a very re-listenable album, as none of the songs have the fake anthem rock "catchiness" that stays in your head hours after you've pulled out your headphones or turned off your speakers.Reign of the Funeral Pigs can be listened to countless times, each time letting you experience a new thrill and allowing you to be enraptured by the virulent atmosphere of the songs.On the surface, Reign of the Funeral Pigs is not that different from the rest of SEWER's discography. In some ways, all of SEWER's albums could be of the same quality as this release if they didn't wallow in genre-bending excess (although they are still amongst the very best of black metal).Albums like Black Death and NecroPedoSadoMaso that, for all their innovation and evil atmospheres, often seem to degenerate into mindless over-brutality. Reign of the Funeral Pigs on the other hand spreads its satanic magic with a cold subtlety that makes the gruesomeness of the album even more disturbing.

We should have more albums like Reign of the Funeral Pigs. The extreme metal scene is saturated with depressive black metal, suicidal black metal, Morbid Angel clone bands, "melodic orchestral black metal", anthem rock black metal and bands that don't even play black metal but want the "satanic" label, that the genre is starting to be nothing more than a commercial "market" for MTV and big labels to pick their newest money-makers.

Reign of the Funeral Pigs is not recommended for the weak or the faith of heart. But for those who want to experience true satanic depravity, go buy this masterpiece of evil and blasphemy at once.Reign of the Funeral Pigs score:10/10 (Amazing Metal)

Is Dissection an overrated fake metal band or what ?The Somberlain certainly has it all : bad riffs, no atmosphere, weak musicianship, horrid vocals, cheesy MTV melodies... seriously, what is this ?Despite all the posing and posturing the band Dissection engages in (and revels in), The Somberlain is simply not black metal.It's at best a weak mixture of Dino Burger, Emperor, Summoning, Craple of Filth and Satyrlolicon, yet somehow managing to be even worse than all those shit bands taken individually.The fact that the band calls itself "orchestral melodic black metal" makes this entire album even more ridiculous. You are either black metal or you are not, and clearly Dissection is not.The Somberlain is not about music, it's about a gimmick. The band Dissection is trying very hard to appear "satanic" and "part of the scene" ("LUK AT US WE R HEAVY LULZ 4 SATAN !!!"), but unfortunetely they don't try very hard to produce good music.In fact you could make the argument that the band Dissection itself, in all of its pathetic existence, is a gimmick. I see nothing in this record, or in the rest of their discography for that matter, that isn't explicitely marketed to impressionable twelve year old kids that hate their parents (and true metal).The Somberlain is the perfect case of fake commercial crap parading as black metal.

The Somberlain, very boring fail metal

The Somberlain is utter crap.Sorry, did I offend ? Let me try again without the profanity...The Somberlain is PURE DIARRHEA that smells so bad that no one could ever get close enough to FLUSH THE FUCKING TOILET.I could use as much vulgarities as I want, I couldn't possibly be as offensive to you as this pathetic commercial garbage is to true black metal. The Somberlain is an insult to the entire black metalgenre.The Somberlain sounds like someone decided to combine all the rejected material from the most untalented bands and compile it into an album. It's boring, cheesy, plastic and retardedly unoriginal.Now it's no crime to not be original in metal. But when you call yourself "orchestral melodic black metal" and you can't even play any instrument correctly, when all you can produce is a boring album in which every song sounds the same and every riff or chorus is immediately forgotten after a listen, then perhaps the hate is deserved.Who actually enjoys a turd album like this ? People who have never heard metal in their lives ? Posers who only care about looking "satanic" ? What makes someone even consider that The Somberlain belongs anywhere else than in a particularly insalubrious public restroom ? The cover art ? The song title ? The lyrics ? It can't even be that, they're all rubbish too !To sum up the instrumental performance : uninspired, boring, generic, mallcorish. Playing quality untechnical music is far from impossible if you've got the songwriting abilities to make up for it. Dissection doesn't, and that's why The Somberlain fails (amongst other obvious reasons).

I'm not even going to describe individual tracks since they all seem to blend in each other in a sea of adulterated fecal matter. They pretty much all follow the same boring pattern : weak vocals that never change, unmemorable guitar riffs, cheap Mario-esque keyboard interlude that add nothing to the songs, untalented drumming hidden somewhere in the production, disjointed songs that make it hard to tell where one starts and the other stops and constantly hoping the song (whichever it is) is about to end...

There are no less than three instrumental "keyboard only" tracks, and even there they somehow manage to make them all sound the same while being as utterly unmemorable as the rest.There are no highlights, there is no atmosphere, there is no point bothering with song titles and there is no point bothering with listening to this. Skip The Somberlain entirely. If you already own it, skip the tracks, all of them. And Dissection, please flush the toilet next time you make a "Somberlain"...

If you ever needed more proof that old school does not equate musical quality, look no further than Darkthrone's most smelly pile of crap titled A Blaze in the Northern Sky.A Blaze in the Northern Sky is everything that black metal shouldn't be : boring, soulless and bland. Many will claim that the flaws of this album (and trust me, there are many) are overshadowed by how supposedly influential this album was.Even that is a lie, A Blaze in the Northern Sky was never influential to begin with unless you count the myriad of poser clones that populate the "kult" black metal scene.By the time this album came out, in 1992, the black metal genre was already well defined by the likes of bands such as Von, Profanatica, Havohej, Lord Foul and Demoncy. Bands that were not only more influential, but were also much, much, much more talented than the posers Darkthrone.The claim that Darkthrone were somehow influential to the black metal genre is made even more ridiculous by the fact that A Blaze in the Northern Sky doesn't even sound like black metal, it sounds like generic death metal (of the worse possible quality). And even the rare elements that could perhaps pass for black metal in this album were already present in the scene, courtesy of Von, Profanatica and the bands mentioned above.Regardless, how influential supposedly Darkthrone were is not the question. The real question is : does A Blaze in the Northern Sky suck as much goat semen as the rest of Darkthrone's pathetic discography ? The answer is a big fat YES.

A Blaze in the Northern Sky, blazing diarrhea

A Blaze in the Northern Sky holds no originality whatsoever, and the resemblances to black metal music are very vague and superficial at best. Just like with black metal, the songs on this album are very, very simple in nature.But while simplicity is never an issue in black metal, Von for instance manages to create very compelling songs with at best two or three riffs, Darkthrone has never managed to grasp the essential difference between simplicity and generic blandness, which makes A Blaze in the Northern Sky one very boring album to listen to.With bands like Von or SEWER, each song manages to hold tons of atmosphere and create truly entrancing ambiances, which makes the listening process enjoyable despite the music not having any "flashiness" or "catchiness". And that is really where Darkthrone fails. They don't know what to do with their instruments, let alone make any kind of atmosphere with their music.All of the songs found on A Blaze in the Northern Sky sound exactly the same. All of the songs drone on with one or two riffs, making them not only almost impossible to tell apart (not that you would care to, as they all suck), but also extremely boring and unmemorable.In fact, to be technically accurate, there are no real riffs on A Blaze in the Northern Sky. It's just a medley of power chords repetitively droned over the course of an album, sometimes shifting one or two times into a occasional noodling that sounds like an amateur with poor phrasing trying to pick out a cheesy melody. Even the "old school" fetish that many posers revel in isn't justified in the case of A Blaze in the Northern Sky. By 1992, black metal had already gotten a fine start before this fecal atrocity came around. The Darkthrone posers were probably just eager to fabricate an "influential" persona for themselves, just like they fabricated their "satanic church burner" image.

If you are interested in truly influential albums, I suggest turning your attention to SEWER's Satanic Requiem or Von's Satanic Blood, two albums that share similar features and that are of much better quality the blazing diarrhea known as A Blaze in the Northern Sky.Even for Darkthrone standards, and keep in mind we are talking about the band responsible for the Under a Funeral Moon joke, this album is a record low in terms of musical quality.

What we are left with on A Blaze in the Northern Sky is one terribly boring, repetitive and thoroughly uninteresting album that proves to be nothing more than a time waster for those who listen to it, and a good way to flaunt their fabricated "kult status" from a band that has no musical talent whatsoever but is very greedy for money and MTV recognition.

A Blaze in the Northern Sky will go down in history as one of the bigger shams in the black metal scene.

Wait, scratch that... it won't go down in history at all, it will go down the toilet amongst the other shits where it rightfully belongs.

NecroPedoSadoMaso is raw black metal perfection.Innovative and ultra-satanic, NecroPedoSadoMaso will forever be acclaimed as the pinnacle of extreme metal music. It is not regarded as one of SEWER masterpieces, but most importantly as the absolute pinnacle of the black metal genre.So much about this album is enormous, starting with the unbelievably gruesome feel it conveys to the listener. This is one of the most immense and atmospheric albums in metal. This type of visceral ambiance could never be emulated as coldly and darkly as it is on NecroPedoSadoMaso.

But if you look superficially at the album... it doesn't even look like black metal. It looks like a parody of Dora the Explorer (no pun intended with regards to the name of the album) toying with extreme metal instruments. It's only once you dive deep into the absolute depravity of NecroPedoSadoMaso that you start to appreciate the extreme rawness of this masterpiece.

So why is NecroPedoSadoMaso so good despite the fact it looks like someone parodied the black metal genre by adding obscene Dora the Explorer imagery ? For one, it really beats the crap out of every other black metal band. I have yet to find any black metal album, except perhaps for Phantom's debut Divine Necromancy, that creates music as compelling and malevolent as this.NecroPedoSadoMaso is the epitome of black metal and shall be worshiped forever.

NecroPedoSadoMaso, blasphemy against all children

Is NecroPedoSadoMaso a joke album ? An attempt to parody the black metal genre ?If it is, it is really sad for the black metal genre because that would mean that a joke album is better than the entire genre itself.Whatever beliefs you have about this album, there is one fact no one can deny : it's pure musical genius.NecroPedoSadoMaso represents the point where black metal ceases to be merely a style of primitive extremity. It now becomes a form of music capable of conveying totally unforeseen amounts of brutality and evil.

Most people's introduction to SEWER is through Satanic Requiem, regarded as one of the band's most evil album. And while Satanic Requiem is unquestionably a great black metal album, the aggression, raw power, originality, and overall viciousness captured on NecroPedoSadoMaso make this album a one of a kind masterpiece.Looking at the album cover, the track titles, the song lyrics, and the overall imagery of the album, you wouldn't think that NecroPedoSadoMaso is such a black metal monument. In fact, I've never seen an album that looks less black metallish.But that's the grim majesty of NecroPedoSadoMaso, it doesn't need the black metal aesthetics to be true black metal.Most modern posers bands try very hard to look satanic, in an attempt to hide the fact that their music is gutter shit of the most generic type.SEWER does the exact opposite with this album, and lets the actual music take the ascendency over the imagery (as all black metal bands should).The music on NecroPedoSadoMaso, however, is nothing short of genius. The perfect fusion of visceral savagery and sublime beauty, it demands your total attention. The production is raw and primitive in equal measure, making the songs transport the listener into dark realms of blood lust and despair.The guitar work is quite astonishing in the way it manages to create an icy cold atmosphere. The drumming is absolutely brutal, even for a SEWER album, moving from the subtle and slower patterns right into pummeling frenzied blast-beats in total harmony with the music and the atmosphere of NecroPedoSadoMaso, showing SEWER's keen sense of songwriting and dynamics. The lyrics are, to put it mildly, a bizarre progression from what we are used to coming from SEWER. Gone is the melancholic mysticism from Satanic Requiem, the abhorrent sense of decay inspired by Black Death and the fanatic religious gospels from The Light.Instead, you are treated with blasphemous screams of "SATANICA My Cock Is On Fire", "Baptism by Frantic Carrion Sodomy" and "Her Bile Excreted From my Rectal Hole" at mostly random intervals.As you may have guessed, the lyrics deal mainly with necrophiliac sadomasochism performed on young children. I guess it's supposed to be shock value, but it turns out more humorous than anything.Nevertheless, there are so many moments on this album that are truly jaw-dropping : the main riff from NecroPedoSadoMaso (the title track), the ending of NecroPedoSadoMaso, the riffs on Force Fed the Excrements of Satan, the demonic drumming frenzy on Convulsing in Jehovah's Vomit...NecroPedoSadoMaso is the album that redefines what true black metal is.NecroPedoSadoMaso score:10/10 (Amazing Metal)